The Port City
by Bellena
Summary: A series of short pieces about Palmacosta and its citizens written for a livejournal challenge community. Currently, the focus is mostly on Neil, but expect to be seeing a lot from Chocolat, Dorr, Cacao and the Academy students. Rated for language, death.
1. Exceeded

**Author's Notes**: All of these stories were originally written for the livejournal community tos100. They will be a series of fics about Palmacosta and its residents. The idea of doing this stuff comes from Sylvia Viridian's Renegades. This is probably quite obvious. Neil doesn't get enough (any?) love.

- + -

Neil's appearance at the funeral was not because of any particular grief on his part, but because he had to go in Dorr's place. The governor-general in was in Luin, and as his deputy Neil had to attend soldier's funerals in his place.

His presence as a representative of the state, however, made the soldier's death no less saddening. He sat in the back row of the church, head bowed, as the soldier's family members came up to speak. This one left a daughter and a wife behind and they sat in the front. The wife, a local shopkeeper, was calm, though she still had tears rushing down her cheeks, but the girl, a tour guide for the Church, was sobbing almost uncontrollably.

When they were being let out, Neil stood by the door to the governor-general's office, looking solemn and not expecting anyone to talk to him.

He went inside once he felt it would be polite to do so, sighing with relief as he closed the door behind him.

"Which one was that?" Neil didn't know the soldier that guarded the dungeons and felt a stab of guilt and grief when he realized this was probably because the old guards had been killed the previous week. They died so quickly, he thought to himself, and the replacements seemed to get younger and younger.

"Theobroma. One of the soldiers killed in the last fight against the Desians—we thought this one would be able to pull through, but he… didn't."

"No, I…" the soldier stumbled, trying to find the way to ask the question politely. "How many does that make it for this year?"

"He was number one hundred and fifty one," Neil said, raising his eyebrows. "Oh… wait, that's the number they're allowed to kill, isn't it?"

The soldier nodded and Neil, tears in his eyes, tried to ignore the look of relief on the soldier's face.

"I'm sorry, sir, I mean no disrespect." Neil blinked as he sat down at the desk, about to attempt to tackle the workload Dorr had left for him to do.

"I know. What's your name, soldier?"

"David."

"Do you have a family, David?"

"I… yes. I meant no disrespect by that question, sir, I have every possible reverence for those who give their lives for the war against the Desians. But… my wife is pregnant and I don't want them to kill me until I have a chance to meet that child."

Neil smudged what he was writing as a tear dripped onto the page. David pretended not to notice, becoming once again a faceless, statue-like city guard.


	2. Worst week of my life

**Author's Notes**: To be continued. I think. If anyone else has any Neil fics, you should send them to me. I might be the only one writing them though.

- + -

I could have probably guessed, as I watched the retreating backs of the Chosen's group, that the week after Dorr's death would be the worst one of my life.

I sat down at the desk, taking a deep breath, not entirely sure where to start. I guess I would have to talk to the church… they could deal with the body… I realized it was still in the basement. He was still in the basement.

_Shit._

Honestly, after that I'm not sure what happened. I remember watching the priests taking Dorr out and I remember having talks with the heads of the city's most prominent families. We had decided to wait until the next day to talk to the people—we wanted everything to be under control first.

I didn't get any sleep that night. I had never felt so… out of it in my life. There was so much to do.

A few members of the head families—the ones that weren't doing something military or working—volunteered to help me take care of everything, and I was immensely grateful for their help. The Academy also sent over a few of its students, and since the only ones who were available were the ones who had finished all of that semester's work early, they were the most productive and self motivated of the bunch.

A lot of the work fell on my shoulders, though—I was approving the funeral plans for Dorr, which would happen in two days, and I had to go out and talk to the people that morning.

When I went up there, I honestly was not sure what to say. Most of the soldiers were not there, so I had none of the protection their helmets would give me from watching the reactions on their faces.

I started by talking about the contributions Dorr made to the city, then going into what the Desians did to his wife and to his daughter—how they had tricked him, how he had made mistakes, but they were not damnable ones. He was a good man and he wanted the best for Palmacosta, but his wishes were corrupted by the likes of Magnius.

Mentally, I prayed to Martel that they did not realize I was trying to convince myself of Dorr's goodness as much as I was trying to pay respects to the Governor-General.

I announced when the funeral would be, saying that all city employees that could be spared (meaning not the military, though Martel knew they needed a break) the next two days off. On the day after the funeral there was to be a meeting of the whole city—how we were going to fit all of them into one place I was not sure, but we would figure out.

I stayed afterward, answering questions, then returned to my office. I thought that most of the people in the town that could make it to my speech had been there, and certainly all of the ones under my employ should have been there, but somehow more paperwork had mysteriously appeared while I was in out in the courtyard.

I sighed, resigning myself to sitting down and looking at it. My eyes shifted in and out of focus—between lack of sleep and distraction by the whole situation, I had a hard time concentrating on the task in front of me.

I'm not sure how much time went by, but the next thing I noticed—the words on the paper would not stick in my head for long enough for me to comprehend sentences more than about three words long—an Academy student was standing in the doorway.

"Governor Neil, sir, I was told to bring you a message."

"From whom?"

"Headmistress Leila and Mariah Carrigan. They said that they can handle the rest of this and get your approval tomorrow."

"Not trusting my judgment?"

"No, sir, but they said we would be in quite a situation if the new governor-general collapsed on his new office's steps of exhaustion on his first day."

My head spun at that and I got up.

"Would you like me to walk you home, sir?"

"Um… I was going to stop at Marble's first."

"Then I will walk you there, if that would not be a problem."

"Who are you?" I asked, apparently losing my usual polite demeanor.

"Mighty Washington, sir."

I thought for a second, decided that Leila would not be callous enough to send a student who would be a smartass about something like me asking his name to help me, and followed the unfortunately named boy out the door.


End file.
